The Supay Chakra project
A Supay Chakra is a large stand of trees cultivated by ants in the Amazon rainforest. This page is t These stands look very much like orchards.
A Supay Chakra (from the Kichwa words meaning "devil's garden") is an association between an ant and a plant in the Amazon rainforest. The ant (Myrmelachista schumanni) lives in the plant (Duroia hirsuta). What makes this association amazing is that the ant destroys all the plants that are not part of its favorite species. This exceptional behavior results in large stands, in the understory, with
27/05/2023
Back at the lab for an afternoon! A short visit to the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena allowed me to prepare some old samples for carbon/nitrogen analyses.
Ratios of carbon adn nitrogen isotopes in animal bodies vary according to their position in the food chain. Thanks to this analysis, I will be able to know whether the Devil's Gardens ants are mainly predators or not, and if they feed insect corpses to their hist plants.
These samples have been waiting in a cupboard for almost four years and I'm super happy that I'll finally get the data over the next couple of weeks!
I can't wait to see the results!